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WEEK of January 15, 2007
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Fire and Brimstone Hit the Heartland

BFS Staff Members Steve Kelly and Jeffrey Stanley Team Up for Sam Shepard Festival

Welch: Just take a look at what we have here, Emma. A starter kit of your basic grassroots flag and decal ensemble. Five ninety-five for the full set of six. Then, from there, you can move right on up to the Proud Patriot package for twelve-fifty, which includes banners, whistles, parade equipment, fireworks—complete with a brand-new remixed CD of Pat Boone singing the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Emma: No! No, thank you! I am not in the market!

Welch: Not in the market. Not in the market. Well—you don’t know how disappointed certain influential parties are going to be about this, Emma. You have no idea.

Upper School administrative assistant and secret actor Steve Kelly’s star turn as the diabolical Mr. Welch, a darkly comic character destined for the same room in Hades as Stanley Kowalski, Sweeney Todd and Macbeth, kicks off this weekend at the Big Little Theatre on Manhattan’s Lower East Side (141 Ridge Street between Houston and Stanton).  The play is Sam Shepard’s political comedy The God of Hell, his most recent work.

Set in a Wisconsin farmhouse, protagonist Emma, a kindhearted dairy wife, and her husband Frank hide their spark-emitting friend Haynes, on the lam from a top-secret research lab, in their basement. All goes glowingly until Welch, an apparent salesman of patriotic memorabilia, comes to snoop and dole out torture and justice for all. The God of Hell is Shepard’s reaction to the war on terror and the playwright has described antagonist Welch as a “demon clown.”

Steve described the play from his character’s perspective. “Welch is an unrelenting government agent who understands and accepts the reality that in order for the eagle to spread its watchful wings a price has to be paid. He acts clownish in order for someone to drop their defenses.” Is there anything at all good about Welch? “He’s a good dresser.”

The BFS connection to this production doesn’t stop with Kelly. The play’s director is BFS staff writer and accomplished playwright Jeffrey Stanley. Coincidence or conspiracy? “Given the play’s subject matter, a vast Quaker conspiracy would be appropriate but it was just coincidence,” said Jeffrey. “We were holding an open call for the roles, I invited lots of actors to audition for me. Steve was by far the best.”

Jeffrey has brought some fresh twists and turns to the play. For one he has retooled Frank and Emma as South Asian immigrants with accents. “I did that to expand the play’s global perspective and to challenge the audience’s assumptions about what a typical American family is exactly,” he said. “I also think it’s wickedly funny given white America’s general fear of anyone with brown skin and an accent these days.”

The play calls for electrical and radioactive effects and Jeffrey couldn’t be more at home with weird science, having been commissioned to write plays about eccentric electrical pioneer Nikola Tesla and telephone inventor Antonio Meucci. Jeffrey often tinkers with his own electrical toys and Tesla coils and he rigged up most of the effects for this play himself. He admits that he did consult with a licensed electrician to make sure he wouldn’t inadvertently toast any actors. He also brought in lighting and set designers who are part of the stage crew for the effects-laden Blue Man Group.

The play has only been performed in New York one other time, its stellar world premiere in 2004 when Welch was played by Tim Roth. Stanley worries that savvy New York theatre goers only have that production with which to compare this new version. “Steve’s got some pressure on him,” he confided. “So do I.”

To learn more about the play see Jeffrey Stanley’s director’s statement.

Tickets ($18 general admission) can be purchased at Smarttix.

above: Stephen Kelly as Welch with Susie Abraham as Emma in the Jeffrey Stanley-directed play, The God of Hell by Sam Shepard.

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